


Now you're just somebody that I used to know

by Ellstra



Series: I missed you more than I thought I would [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7859899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellstra/pseuds/Ellstra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux knew they'd catch him and execute him after the First Order fell apart. He just hoped <i>he</i> wouldn't be with them, the man who caused it all, the man who took Hux's breath away. Ben Solo. The man who killed Kylo Ren. But he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now you're just somebody that I used to know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solohux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solohux/gifts).



> Dedicated to [Solohux](http://solohux.tumblr.com/). Inspired by her [post](http://solohux.tumblr.com/post/149338898574/i-think-one-of-my-favourite-things-about).

“You’re surrounded. Surrender yourself and you will not be harmed.”  
Hux raised his eyes from his excuse of a table to look into a faceless mask. He chuckled when he realized that for all their hatred of the Stormtrooper program, the New Republic used the same weapons against him that they used to condemn ages ago when he was still a General, somebody. That life seemed like that of a different person entirely.

“A whole troop to retrieve a pathetic, harmless hermit? I must say I’m flattered,” Hux spat. Sarcasm and snippy comments were all he had left to shield himself with now when the Order was destroyed, scattered, gone. Gone like the man Hux loved, gone in second of too much rumination, gone without the men keeping it together - Hux, the heart of the First Order, and Kylo, who had held Hux’s heart in his hands.

“Don’t be smart with me, General Hux,” the leader of the troop said, “stand up with your hands in the air where I can see them.”

“I’m not a General anymore,” Hux pointed out but he did as he was told. He didn’t want to die in this miserable hole, it was hell enough to live in for the past two years. He may not be a General and he may not be a Hux even anymore but he will not die like a nameless soldier because of that. If he gets a chance to spit in the face of Leia Organa, he’ll get all he could ask for. The name was bitter in his mind, the mere thought of the woman insufferable. She ruined Hux’s life, or at least was the cause of it.

“And I’m not a stormtrooper,” the masked person said, pulling Hux’s hands to the small of his back with one hand, pressing a blaster between Hux’s shoulder blades. 

“Funny how a barrel on my spine makes you think you’re better than me, FN-2187.”

“Funny how with a blaster pointed at your back you still can’t shut up.”

“You didn’t say you wanted me to be silent,” Hux said and shrugged, standing still while FN-2187 bound his hands together. He waited for the lock to click and tested the restraints. They were looser than he recalled them, but maybe they were a different type. A good-guy type. The one heroes use to bind criminals when they lead them to their execution. Not the type men let their lovers use on them to show their affection… But that was before. That was in the different life, in a different reality.

“I’d say that whatever you say will be used against you, but I don’t think there is anything you could say to make your fate more obvious,” FN-2187 informed him.

“If it’s that obvious, why do you bother with these?” Hux moved his hands until he heard the handcuffs click in protest. 

“We do not execute people without a trial, however grave their crimes are.”

“How noble of you,” Hux rolled his eyes, “shall we go?”

“Don’t speak unless spoken to.”

“Or what? You'll shoot me?”

“It’s okay, Finn. I’ll handle it. Leave us.” There was a voice speaking and Hux froze. The voice shouldn’t have been there, it belonged to the other life, to the other Hux. He had buried it, carefully, forcefully and it didn’t bother him anymore. It stopped torturing him in his dreams and he had thought it was forgotten and that he’d never hear it again. And yet here it was, the only thing that could possibly have the power to destroy him, destroy the last piece of him that was still clinging onto the other life, unable to let go.

“Hux,” the man spoke again. The blaster barrel left Hux’s back; he felt more vulnerable, more in danger than with it threatening to shatter his backbone and tear his spinal cord in threads. He had been reconciled with death, for this new life was little but dying, but the voice changed everything. It called to Hux, brought up the world in which he was still somebody, in which he held the power to destroy the galaxy in one hand and caressed the cheek of a loved one with the other. The memory of it broke its way through Hux’s brain, down the long abandoned paths and build up a face from fragments that never truly left his consciousness, despite the time, despite the heartbreak, despite the loss. The face belonged to a body, a body Hux used to know well, a strong and proud vessel of sheer, raw energy. And at last there was a name, a name that unlocked the door to the former life and to the emotions Hux had so laboriously shattered into pieces he never wanted to pick up again for if he did, his arduously attained false sense of peace would be replaced with will to live he simply couldn’t afford.

_Kylo_. 

“Ben,” Hux snorted and turned around, contempt on his face. The word was an insult, a spit in the face, the _fuck you_ he never got to say. He braced himself before he looked at the other man, convinced not to let it break him, not to crumble like he did when his world fell apart under his hands, the world he had build up with his blood, his bones, his heart. 

He glanced at Ben and his chest swelled and threatened to burst with all the repressed memories, all the insults he wanted to scream, all the pain that had never found its outlet. The face hadn’t changed much; the brown eyes were just as deep and round and huge as he remembered them, the nose long and broad yet elegant, lips pink and plump and dry, puckered at the corners as if it was winter all year round, the sprinkle of birthmarks and moles, the scar that was paler and less prominent but still there, still a testament of how the girl had hurt him, proof that he wasn’t invincible, reminder of how Hux had almost lost him. They were all there, little things Hux remembered and cherished, against his will, and yet they were not the same because they didn’t belong to the same person anymore.

“Please come with us calmly,” Ben said and Hux winced. Ben’s words were calm, his voice dripping with self-control and _pity_. Hux felt sick and betrayed; this stranger, this parody of a man, had the audacity to steal Kylo’s voice along with his body and abuse it, rape it, beat the passion out of it. Hux had been angry with the uncontrolled emotion that seemed to always underline Kylo’s words, no matter what he said, before he started to find it endearing and desirable. There was none of it in Ben’s voice; his words were flat, lifeless. 

“Calmly,” Hux rolled the word off his tongue as if it was poisonous or perhaps could hurt him. 

“I don’t want to cause you more pain,” Ben said. He made a step towards Hux, reaching a pale hand towards the ginger. Hux walked back until his thighs hit the table and he almost fell over. He pulled away as far as he could from Ben in the limited space. The familiar eyes that lacked any hint of animation seemed hurt.

“Then I’ll try to be in as much pain as possible,” Hux retorted. He could have been in a speeder, heading off towards the New Republic’s Supreme Court and he wouldn’t have given a fuck. But this mockery dared him to go peacefully, as if Hux was just a toy he could play with, as if Hux would ever degrade himself enough to submit to the man who destroyed his career, took away all he believed in and killed the man Hux loved. 

“I wish it wouldn’t have to be like this,” Ben murmured, almost tenderly. Hux bit his tongue, forcefully, aiming to draw blood just to make himself focus, not to lose himself, not to disgrace Kylo’s memory by talking to this pretense, this shadow of him. Hux may have been desperate but he wasn’t going to show any sort of affection if front of Ben, even if all he wanted was to crawl back into those arms and let himself be held. 

“It didn’t,” Hux replied instead when he composed himself enough not to let his voice waver or break.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Hux said, “I should have killed you when I could.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you, Hux,” Ben pleaded and it sounded more like he wanted to convince himself than Hux and there was finally a spark of emotion in his eyes, “I wish I could take it back.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, it must have been terrible to kill a man who was a thousand times better than you!” Hux screamed, getting hysterical. Sobs were threatening to explode in his chest and he couldn’t allow that, not in front of Ben. Kylo deserved better than a broken shell of a man who broke into tears in front of someone as insignificant as Ben. Kylo had held him together, had been the reason why Hux stayed alive and mostly sane during the years and Hux would not disgrace his memory by surrendering to the man who took him away.

“No, that was the right thing to do,” Ben said absent-mindedly as if he was focused on other things, “I thought rejecting the light would bring me peace but it nearly destroyed me. But I wish I didn’t get you involved. That way I wouldn’t have hurt you when I left.”

“Don’t you dare speak like you’re him,” Hux growled, “you don’t have the right.”

“I apologize.”

There was silence between them for a long time. Hux was torn between curling up into a ball and hiding until Ben found the courage to finally drag him away, and snarling and biting for as long as he had to until they killed him. His newly-found will to live was fading and withering when he realized there was no place for him in this world. He had belonged to the other life, the other world where Kylo was alive and unsubduable and _his, his, his_. This reality was like picture in the mirror - distorted, unfamiliar, wrong and not real. 

“What are you waiting for?” Hux said at last, “Kill me already, because I’m not _going calmly_ with you.”

“I don’t kill anymore,” Ben replied.

“It looks like I’m going to have to do it alone, don’t I?” Hux cackled and let his panic course through his veins freely. “You said you wanted to make this easier for me but those were just empty words, huh? You’re a liar, Ben Solo, you’re a murderer and a thief and I hate you.”

Ben flinched at the accusations and opened his mouth to say something, anything, to tell Hux that he was sorry but he couldn’t do this, couldn’t take a life, couldn’t kill Hux because as much as he wanted to lock him in the darkness and keep him there, he couldn’t forget the love he had borne the man, and he pursed his lips again. He wished there was something he could do for Hux, a way how he could avoid his trial and inevitable execution, a way he could make Hux _see_ how this was who he truly was, how Kylo Ren was a phase that arose from the doubts his weak mind tested him with and was overcome with the help of the Force. 

“I deserve all that,” he nodded and lowered his face for a moment to hide his agitation from Hux.

“You’re pathetic,” Hux spat on the floor towards Ben’s feet. He had always seen that gesture as barbaric and childish and looked down at the people who did it but that was _then_ , when he wasn’t desperate and when there were other ways of showing his dismay. Spitting and swearing was all he had left. 

Hux reached for the drawer under the tabletop and opened it with difficulties. He slipped his bound hands inside and found a hilt of an old lightsaber he kept as a proof that the other life was real. Kylo had left it in Hux’s room, lost and abandoned in the heap of clothes scattered on the floor. 

Ben didn’t stop him. 

“Will you at least let me die without my hands bound like a common thief?” he dared Ben, the lightsaber in his hand. The restraints on his wrists quivered and fell apart, hitting the ground with a rattling sound. Hux stretched his arms and showed Ben the weapon he held, a relic from the past times. He attempted to ignite it even though it never did in his hand, never obeyed him, him who had been born without the slightest hint of sensitivity to the great Force that moves the universe. The air was pierced with a blood-red glow and Hux cheered madly as he swung it. The light of the weapon was subdued, not even half as bright as when Kylo had fought with it, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because even the Force was with him, even the Force mourned Kylo, even the Force hated this pathetic excuse of a man who had to take time before he broke a pair of handcuffs.

“The Force is with me,” Hux told Ben with a maniacal grin, “Kylo is with me.”

Ben didn’t say anything as he watched Hux pierce his body with the short side of the crossguard, for the weapon was not made to be turned against its user. He watched as Hux’s body collapsed to the ground and the hilt of the weapon fell to the ground, charred and black and empty. Ben knelt down at Hux’s side and ran his hand down the face he had once been privileged to kiss. 

“I loved you,” he whispered to the deaf ear of his former lover as he cradled the lifeless body, weeping hot, burning tears of regret. 

**Author's Note:**

> I think like the worst the angst, the more poetic my writing. Please tell me what you thought.


End file.
